


In the Mirror

by mustinvestigate



Series: Nora Freis [6]
Category: Fallout 4
Genre: AU, Bloody Mary - Freeform, Candyman - Freeform, Gen, Nora Freis, cornier than candy corn, spookify Your OC, spoopy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-10-08
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:33:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26900704
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mustinvestigate/pseuds/mustinvestigate
Summary: For Laridian'sSpookify Your OCchallenge.
Series: Nora Freis [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/391834
Comments: 6
Kudos: 8
Collections: Spookify Your OCs





	In the Mirror

**Author's Note:**

  * For [laridian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laridian/gifts).



> Possible spoilers for...things I haven't actually written yet?

Amir heard it from Walt, who heard it from Mikey way out in Nordhagen when his mom made him come along and learn how to fix their big desalination tanks. That was weird to start with, because you shouldn’t have to cross the entire ‘Wealth to learn the craziest story in your home settlement. And he knew damn well Mikey was an idiot, and Walt once spent an entire day pestering all the merchants in Starlight for carpet polish just because his uncle told him not to come home without it, so Amir didn’t worry too much about it.

The house had never been haunted as long as he’d lived next door. He couldn’t imagine any ghost wanting to share a room with that weird Mr Handy, anyway, not with it chewing the ear off anyone who crossed into the yard about some family it’d served way back in the old days. Any sane ghost would pack its bags and find a nice quiet cave to lurk around, instead.

Wasn’t like they could even try, not knowing the General’s real name.

That’s how he knew it was something stupid Mikey's big cousin made up. Like a ghost stops answering to the only title anyone dared call them all their life? Lot of the old settlers, like Amir’s granddad, still tapped their foreheads when they talked about her, as if she’ll pop out and set them to digging latrines for not saluting sharp enough.

Stupid. Just a stupid, dumb, baby kinda story someone who stared into sun-bright waves all day would think was real.

So Amir and Walt forgot about it - okay, so they forgot about it after giving it a shot. Not at midnight, no, and not in her mirror, but they put their heads under a blanket and chanted three times into a shard Walt found in the stream: “General...General...General…”

And, of course, jack shit happened except for Walt’s mom wanting to know what the hell they were up to, messing around with something so sharp around her good set of sheets, and sending Amir home before supper.

But that was months ago, before Mikey came to try and have some letters and figures bashed into his thick skull by the Sanctuary schoolteachers, and brought with him a scrap of paper. It was thin as a moth’s wing and grey with mildew, and he’d found it stuffed in a crack when they tore down their old shack.

“Look at that picture!”

They looked.

“That’s her, right? That’s got to be her, with the hat.”

She was wearing the hat, they agreed.

“You can read, right? What’s it say?”

“Publick Occurances,” Amir sounded out.

“No, dipshit - under the photo.”

He handed the paper to Walt. “You read it.”

Walt’s lips moved, but all that came out was: “I don’t wanna.”

“That’s her name. Isn’t it? It’s got to be.”

“Her name was ‘General’,” Walt argued, and Amir wasn’t sure he meant it as a joke.

“So we know her name…”

Mikey’s eyes glowed.

Amir called him an idiot.

Walt said he heard his mother calling.

Still, all three of them stood up in front of the old blue house when the moon was high, just before midnight. They waited until the robot floated out back, taking a turn patrolling the cornfield that stretched down to the river, before sneaking in and, bumping into each other in their haste, lighting a candle in front of the bathroom mirror.

“You start,” Amir whispered.

“No, you!”

“We have to do it together,” Mikey hissed at them both, setting the photo behind the flame. “Three times.”

“Why three?” Walt asked.

“Three’s a number of power.”

“Does it matter?” Amir said, throwing his skinny shoulders back. “Nothing’s gonna happen, not even if you say it four times, or a hundred.”

“Except that we’ll get caught.”

“So get on with it!”

“I think I hear my mother…”

“Shut up, Walt!”

“No, I really…”

“Your ma’s up working on the gate turret. I saw her.”

“I saw her working the gate, too.” Mikey sounded like his dad, then, wiggling his hips and hanging his tongue out past his lips.

Mikey’s dad was an idiot, too.

Walt raised a fist he definitely didn’t know how to use and Amir leaned between the two of them to squint at the photo again. He still wasn’t sure this was the General or just some smart-assed young woman who’d stolen her hat for a minute and got into the paper to celebrate surviving it.

She hardly looked scary at all.

“One, two…” he began.

The other boys crowded close, forgetting their argument. “Three!”

Silence.

Walt giggled.

Mikey elbowed Amir in the chest. “Knew you didn’t have the balls.”

“Nora Freezey!” Amir snapped, then barrelled onward. “Nora…”

“Freezey!” The other two joined in, Mikey’s voice cracking.

Walt giggled again, high and excited. “One more, come on!”

“Nora Freezey!” they finally managed in unison, and Amir shook his head, already irritated that they’ll have to say it two more times together, and maybe three more after that, before Mikey’ll admit he was full of shit and they can sneak off before the robot’s back and -

“Jesus - Fucking - Christ!”

The apparition in the mirror...Amir couldn’t have held his hand on a bible and sworn he even know the word, but “apparition” was the only thing that sprang out of his brain as the photo fell forward, catching fire, and the glass sucked in the smoke and it swirled and swirled and swirled and…

“And who in the hell do you think you are?”

...and it was her, the woman with a little smirk to her lips, smoke curling like uncarded wool around her face, until it melted and half that face was gone, a ruin of grey gore, one eye boiling and the other an empty socket and…

Walter whimpered. Mikey grabbed Amir around the chest, trembling so hard he shuddered them both.

Amir, hand back on the bible, couldn’t swear he hadn’t pissed himself a little.

“M - mm - mm -“

The smoke swirled again, puffing out into a whole face, a living face, and...and not right. Just not right. Too smooth. Too soft. Too something.

“Mmm - mm-”

He can’t get his lips to work.

“G - g - gen - General?” Walt managed, swallowing like a new hatched ‘lurk’s caught in it.

“Ma’am!” Amir finally forced out, tapping his forehead with numb fingers.

“Guh!” Mikey added, nodding sharply.

The smoke face crumbled - actually crumbled, not just started to look kinda sad like people usually meant when they were being poetical. It tipped forward, fell into wrinkles, lips sinking, eyes almost lost in crows’ feet. Its hair thinned to wisps, leftover smoke drifting up and...no, not away. It curved and settled like a crown, the Minutemen sigil sketched over her lined forehead.

She sighed. “This is Sanctuary, I’d wager?”

Amir squeaked, then nodded.

“Any chance Preston set you up to this?”

They shook their heads together.

"Which Preston?" Walt asked, because there's three just in Sanctuary and another in Abernathy and Mikey's Aunt Pressie and for a crazy second Amir would've thrown any of them between him and the...the ghost in the mirror.

“Mikey told us!”

“Shut up!” Despite the angry words, he held Amir tighter.

“I like your hat,” Walt whispered.

“What year is...no. No, don’t tell me.” The apparition leaned closer, touching the other side of the glass. “Look at that snoot - you’re one of mine. I recognise mine, no matter how many years have slipped under the bridge.”

They shrank back, nervously touching their noses.

“M-ma’am,” Amir started, not knowing what he means to say but just wanting something - anything - to stop her words.

“I don’t grant wishes and I don’t tell fortunes,” she continued, raising a crooked finger. “I’ve done enough for you all out here. Dropped dead weeding those mutfruits out back, ones I planted myself, feeding you settlers.Get on with life yourselves, and stop shaking these old bones.”

“Ma’am, we, we didn’t…”

“Didn’t have enough to keep you busy? Well, now, I can fix that - you’ve still got brahmin? ‘Course you do. Before dawn, you three are going to have that whole pen clean enough to eat off. And put some of that brahmin sh...flop around my mutfruit trees - they’re looking peaky.”

“Miss Nora!”

None of the boys would admit later just how loud they screamed, or exactly who knocked over the candle as they scrambled around and under the robot, Walt’s good jacket getting scorched by its lower jet. The flame guttered out but its smoke rose, billowed, merging with the old woman behind the glass and drawing her out.

She grew - she stretched - she stopped looking anything like a woman and spread out a deathclaw's vicious embrace, grew a broad 'lurk queen's shell, then swished and puffed higher then the ceiling could possibly be in...in...in a miles-high mushroom cloud shot through with green lightning and

and

and they boiled out of the front door like hell followed, Amir grabbing Mikey's arm as he fell and hauling both their asses across the lawn on Walt's heels.

Somewhere far far away, definitely not in the cursed house of instant, face-melting death, a young woman's voice drifted after them.

“Codsworth, honey, how’ve you been?”

Old Man Sturges - who didn’t look old at all, but they were used to everyone calling him that and never thought to question it - opened his garage door on the second knock.

“What are you after in such a hurry, this time a night?”

"Shovels!" Mikey yelled. "And a wheelbarrow. A big one!"

"And a bucket!"

"Soap!"

Old Man Sturges blew cigarette smoke downwind of the boys.

"Funny shopping list for you three."

Amir planted his feet. "We need them. We need them now."

Mikey threw an elbow into his ribs.

"Please," Amir added, then, "Sir."

"And the brahmin pen key." Walt cringed back at Sturges sharp glare.

"Why you wanting to mess around there?"

"We, uh, we…"

The three boys shared a glance that managed to simultaneously demand one of the others tell what happened and also refuse to breathe a word of it so long as they live.

"We just got to," Amir finally said.

Sturges stepped out into the street, glancing up at the quiet, dark house no one lives in.

"You messing around up there?"

"N-no…"

He nodded. "So…"

A crow cries out from underneath Sturges' roof edge, razzing them for waking it so rudely.

"She show up tonight?"

None of them answered.

“She give you chores? On forfeit of your immortal souls, you don't get them done right quick?”

"She didn't say any forfeit -"

Mikey kicked Walt in the shin.

"We...we just really need that stuff. Now. Sir."

"Okay, then." Old Man Sturges pinched off his cigarette and tucked the butt in a hip pocket. “Well, that’ll learn ya. Leave the dead be, if you don’t wanna wish yourself one of them.”


End file.
